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COMMEMORATIVE  TRIBUTE  TO 

MES%HITCOMB   RILEY 

By  HAMLINJGARJLAND 


READ  IN 
THE  1920  LECTURE  SERIES  OF 

E 

ARTS  AND  LETTERS 


.MERICAN  ACADEMY  OF 

ARTS  AND  LETTERS 

1922 


HBBH 


GAYLAMOUNT 

PAMPHLET  BINDfcA 
Manufactured  by 


COMMEMORATIVE  TRIBUTE  TO 

JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

By  HAMLIN  GARLAND 


READ  IN 
THE  1920  LECTURE  SERIES  OF 

THE  AMERICAN  ACADEMY  OF 
ARTS  AND  LETTERS 


AMERICAN  ACADEMY  OF 
ARTS  AND   LETTERS 

1922 


Copyright,    1922,   by 
THE  AMERICAN   ACADEMY  OF  ARTS  AND  LETTERS 


NEW   YORK 


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i 

JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

BY  HAM  LIN  GARLAND 

One  day  in  1885,  while  calling  upon 
my  friend  Charles  E.  Kurd,  the  Lit 
erary  Editor  of  the  Boston  Transcript, 
I  noticed  upon  his  desk  a  curious  little 
volume  bound  in  parchment  entitled 
The  Old  Swimtniti*  Hole  and  'Leven 

More  Poems,  by  Benjamin  F.  John 
son  of  Boone. 

Hurd,  observing  my  interest,  handed 
the  book  to  me,  saying,  "Here  is  a  man 
you  should  be  interested  in.  He  comes 

from  out  your  way." 
This  was  my  introduction  to  "The 
Hoosier  Poet."    I  read  in  this  booklet 

When  the  Frost  is  on  the  Punkin, 
My  Fiddle,  and  other  of  the  pieces 

ACADEMY  NOTES 

M619554 


2 

THE  AMERICAN  ACADEMY 

which  later  became  familiar  through 

Riley's  readings  on  the  platform,  and 

I  tasted  in  them  a  homely  flavor  which 

no  other  American  poet  had  given  me. 

I  became  almost  at  once  an  advocate  of 

the  man  and  the  book.    I  wrote  to  the 

author  and  thereafter  read  every  line 

of  his  writings  so  far  as  I  could  obtain 

them.     I  felt  that  in  James  Whitcomb 

Riley    America    had    a    writer    who 

voiced  as  no  one  else  had  voiced  the 

outlook  of  the  Middle  Western  farmer. 

Year  by  year  Riley  grew  in  reputa 

tion  and  appeal.    He  published  After- 

whiles,  Pipes  o'  Pan,  and  other  vol 

umes    of    mingled    verse    and    prose, 

partly  in  the  Hoosier  vernacular,  partly 

in  an  English  which  was  touched  with 

the    same    quaint,    individual    quality. 

The  magazines  soon  began  to  publish 

his  poems,  but  in  truth  his  success  did 

not  come  so  much  in  print  as  through 

his  own  reading  of  his  lines  from  the 

platform.     He  had  in  him  something 

ACADEMY  NOTES 

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of  the  minstrel.  He  possessed  notable 
power  to  charm  and  move  an  audience, 
and  everywhere  he  spoke  he  left  a 
throng  of  friends.  To  hear  him  read 
— or  recite — A  Song  of  the  Airly 
Days  was  to  be  moved  in  a  new  and 
unforgetable  way.  His  vibrant  indi 
vidual  voice,  his  flexile  lips,  his  droll 
glance,  united  to  make  him  at  once  poet 
and  comedian — comedian  in  the  sense 
which  makes  for  tears  as  well  as  for 
laughter. 

Year  by  year  his  popularity  in 
creased,  until  his  royalties  surpassed 
those  of  even  the  greatest  of  Amer 
ican  novelists.  He  appealed  with  sin 
gular  power  to  the  people  of  his  own 
State,  but  he  also  appealed  to  the  read 
ers  in  Eastern  States.  He  expressed 
something  of  the  wistful  sadness  of 
the  middle-aged  man  who  is  looking 
back  on  the  sunlit  streams  of  his  boy 
hood,  and  he  voiced  also  with  notable 
fidelity  the  emotions  of  children  in  the 


AND  MONOGRAPHS 


THE  AMERICAN  ACADEMY 


wonder-world  of  the  present.  In  all 
this  work  of  the  homely  American 
Hoosier  type  his  pen  was  adequate. 
He  was  recognized  at  last  as  the  chief 
singer  in  the  rural  vernacular. 

In  1892  I  visited  Riley  at  his  native 
town  of  Greenfield,  Indiana,  and  the 
town  and  country  gave  moving  evi 
dence  of  the  wonder-working  power 
of  the  poet.  To  my  eyes  it  was  the 
most  unpromising  field  for  art,  espe 
cially  for  the  art  of  verse.  The  land 
scape  had  no  hills,  no  lakes,  no  streams 
of  any  movement  or  beauty.  Ragged 
fence-rows,  flat  and  dusty  roads,  fields 
of  wheat  alternating  with  clumps  of 
trees — these  were  the  features  of  a 
country  which  to  me  was  utterly  com 
monplace — and  yet  from  this  dusty, 
drab,  unpromising  environment  Riley 
had  been  able  to  draw  the  honey  of 
woodland  poesy,  a  sweet  in  -which  a 
native  fragrance  as  of  basswood  and 
buckwheat  bloom  mingled  with  hints 


ACADEMY  NOTES 


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of  an  English  meadow  and  the  tang 
of  a  Canada  thistle. 

In  person  Riley  was  as  markedly  in 
dividual  as  his  verse.  He  was  short, 
square-shouldered,  and  very  blond, 
with  a  head  which  he  was  accustomed 
to  speak  of  as  "of  the  tack-hammer 
variety."  His  smoothly  shaven  face 
was  large  and  extremely  expressive, 
the  face  of  a  great  actor.  Though 
grim  in  repose  it  lighted  up  with  the 
merriest  smiles  as  he  read  or  as  he 
uttered  some  quaint  jest.  His  diction 
when  he  wished  it  to  be  so  was  admir 
ably  clear  and  precise,  but  he  loved  to 
drop  into  the  speech  and  drawl  of  his 
Hoosier  characters,  and  to  me  this  was 
a  never-failing  delight.  I  have  never 
met  a  man  save  Mark  Twain  who  had 
the  same  amazing  flow  of  quaint  con 
ceits.  He  spoke  "copy"  all  the  time. 

In  his  own  proper  person  he  was 
wise  rather  than  learned.  His  speech 
had  the  charm  of  the  proverb,  the  sen- 


AND  MONOGRAPHS 


THE  AMERICAN  ACADEMY 


tentiousness  of  the  homespun  philoso 
pher.  Once  he  said  to  me,  "I  don't 
take  no  credit  fer  my  ignorance — jest 
born  that-a-way."  At  another  time 
he  remarked  with  a  touch  of  mysti 
cism,  "My  work  did  itself.  I'm  only 
the  wilier  bark  through  which  the 
whistle  comes." 

His  dialect  verse  is  written  in  two 
ways,  one  in  the  fashion  of  the  man  of 
little  schooling  who  is  expressing  him 
self  on  paper,  and  the  other,  as  the 
same  man  (or  his  neighbor)  might 
express  in  actual  speech  the  feeling 
which  impelled  him  to  utterance.  In 
each  case  the  expression  is  indirect, 
for  Americans  of  his  type  are  careful 
not  to  "slop  over,"  as  they  call  it.  As 
Riley  himself  says,  "I  never  represent 
people  as  the  scholar  thinks  they  ought 
to  think  and  feel, — I  never  try  to  edit 
nature.  Nature  is  good  enough  fer 
God,  it's  good  enough  fer  me." 

As   he   drew   towards   old   age   his 


ACADEMY  NOTES 


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health   failed   and  the  quality   of   his 

work  declined  in  value.     He  repeated 

himself  as  Bret  Harte  did,  and  when 

he  tried  imaginative  or  formal  verse 

he  often  failed.     His  genius  was  for 

the  homely,  the  quaint,  the  pathetic, 

and  his  best  expression  was  the  ver 

nacular.    It  was  in  poems  like  Nothin' 

at  All  to  Say  and  Griggsby's  Station 

that  he  won  his  fame,  and  not  in  fanci 

ful  pieces  like  The  Flying  Islands  of 

the    Night.      There    are    a    hundred 

American  poets   who   can   write   con 

ventional  sonnets,  there  are  very  few 

who  can  catch  the  charm   that   is  in 

Kingry's  Mill  and  Doivn  Around  the 

River. 

Others  get  the  phonetics  of  every 

day  speech,  but  Riley  thought  in  dia 

lect.     Common  speech  is  the  bones  of 

his  verse.    It  cannot  be  translated..    It 

is  not,  of  course,  actual  speech,  but  it 

suggests  it,  epitomizes  it.    No  one  else 

has  ever  caught  more  deftly  the  lisp 

AND  MONOGRAPHS 

THE  AMERICAN  ACADEMY 


and  stammer  of  childhood.  Eugene 
Field  wrote  about  children,  Riley 
dramatized  them.  In  all  that  he  wrote 
he  retained  his  individuality — even  in 
his  more  conventional  verse  he  was 
never  without  his  own  savor. 

He  taught  us  once  again  the  funda 
mental  truth  which  we  were  long  in 
learning  here  in  America,  that  there  is 
a  poetry  of  common  things  as  well  as 
of  epic  deeds.  His  immense  success 
with  the  common,  non-literary  public 
is  to  be  counted  for  him  and  not 
against  him.  Either  consciously  or 
unconsciously  his  verses  were  wrought 
for  the  family.  He  never  forced  the 
erotic  note.  Surrounded  by  Amer 
icans,  he  wrote  for  Americans.  To  me 
his  restraint  is  a  fine  and  true  distinc 
tion. 

His  verse  sprang  from  a  certain  era 
of  Mid-western  development.  It  is  a 
humble  crop  gathered  from  the  cor 
ners  of  rail  fences,  from  the  vines 


ACADEMY  NOTES 


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9 

which   clamber   upon   the   porches   of 

small   villages,    and    from    the   weedy 

side-walks  of  quiet  towns  far  from  the 

great  markets  of  the  world.     For  the 

people  who  are  his  kindred  Riley  was 

a  spokesman,  and  his  verses  will  not 

die  so  long  as  those  of  us  who  came 

up  through  the  same  lanes  and  by-ways 

live   in   the   golden   memories   of    the 

"Airly  Days."   The  poets  of  to-day  are 

writing  of  a  different  America,  vary 

ing  their  accent  to  meet  the  demands 

of  their  day,  and  this  is  their  privilege 

and  their  duty,  but  in  the  midst  of  the 

tumult  of  "the  New  America"  I  take 

pleasure   in  paying  tribute  to   a  man 

who  did  so  much  to  embody  a  world 

that  is  gone. 

As  he  said  of  his  brother,  so  I  say 

of  him  : 

With  a  cheery  word  and  a  wave  of  the 

hand 

He  has  wandered  into  a  foreign  land  — 

He  is  not  dead,  he  is  just  away  ! 

AND  MONOGRAPHS 

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